FRONT-LINE LIBERAL FROM VERMONT
Neuberger, Richard L.
Front-Line Liberal From Vermont By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER VERMONT is popularly presumed to be a rockbound stronghold of New England conservatism. It is one of the two states which voted forlornly...
...When this happened, someone would have to be sent to fetch the boy who had been sent to fetch the herd...
...Power companies took him to their bosom...
...A stocky man with close-cropped gray hair contradicts this reputation of his native state...
...February 12 is customarily a day on which Republican orators state that if only the Emancipator would return, business would be freed from its yoke of oppression and the downtrodden industrialist liberated at last...
...As chief executive of the state, Aiken opposed Federal flood-control projects in New England...
...He is a living example of the fact that formal education is essential to neither leadership nor understanding in America...
...AT the age of 52, George Aiken probably has a long and eventful Senate career ahead of him...
...As one who has never voted for Mr...
...He contended that Vermont would thus surrender control over her own resources...
...George had no funds for college, so stayed on in the nursery business...
...Someone has said we have a "government of men, not laws...
...His name is George...
...All this became clear when Aiken spoke on Lincoln's birthday...
...Aiken married Beatrice Howard and they spent their honeymoon at the State Grange convention...
...David Aiken...
...When President Roosevelt died, Aiken said that the late President would go down in history as a benefactor of mankind...
...Lawrence Seaway project but no New Dealer is George David Aiken of Vermont...
...With Bob La Follette, he put through the food-stamp plan so that families of low income could help consume food surpluses...
...It is one of the two states which voted forlornly for Landon in 1936...
...He is a Puritan with strict personal standards...
...In Vermont, Aiken was leader of a farm cooperative which advocated public ownership of utilities...
...I object to regimenting plants as much as I object to regimenting people...
...They have three daughters and a son, all grown and all married...
...The country saw that he favored greater security for the aged, increased unemployment compensation and higher wages and shorter working hours...
...He voted against the Lend-Lease bill because he feared it concentrated too much personal authority in the chief executive...
...He soon showed that he would follow such a policy in the Senate...
...of "free enterprise," that much-misunderstood institution...
...Politically as well as socially, Aiken is a lone-wolf...
...He was one of the few Republican defenders of the Bretton Woods monetary agreement...
...McKellar to scuttle the TVA...
...Social security, the Wagner Act, TVA and Grand Coulee Dam, the FEPC, the labor standards act—these and similar policies and projects have received his approval...
...But I had him pegged wrong...
...Aiken is in Vermont, looking after their horticultural interests...
...LEADER of the long fight for the S.t...
...Aiken...
...George Norris told his secretary, Jack Robertson, "You know, when that fellow Aiken was Governor I got pretty mad over his attitude on flood control...
...He fought for the Senate confirmation of both Henry Wallace and Aubrey Williams...
...Deo volente, George Aiken can serve his fellow Americans, usefully and well, for many years to come...
...Aiken said quite the opposite...
...Franklin Roosevelt was raised along the Hudson and George Norris along the Sandusky...
...In the public mind Vermont is associated with Tory views that date back to WTilliam Mc-Kinley and Mark Hanna...
...But both liberals and reactionaries misjudged Aiken...
...He was really against Federal domination...
...Both in committee and on the floor, he led the fight for Aubrey Williams...
...Aiken sends the Senator flowers from Vermont...
...Nor did the Vermont Senator hesitate to condemn the anti-Negro bias which activated much of the opposition to Williams...
...He has just been reelected to another six-year term, and he is entrenched in his own state...
...But a man can be literate without a degree and he wrote a little book called Pioneering with Wild Flowers...
...As a boy, flowers were his main interest, especially wildflowers...
...In 1930 he was elected to the Vermont legislature, and two years later he was speaker of the House of Representatives...
...What was really meant is that we have a government of lawyers...
...He's one of the most progressive men who has come here in many years...
...Nor are Presidents nominated from states with three electoral votes...
...He was hailed as a champion...
...A unique feature Is an extra bed so that visiting constituents may have a place to park while in crowded Washington...
...When he was sent to fetch the cows he often dallied in meadows to examine the flowers growing there...
...This is a deliberate attempt," he said, "to prepare the way for a little group of men to run things their way...
...This did more than help the farmers...
...He was elected to the United States Senate, succeeding the late Ernest Gibson...
...Modest and unassuming, he lives in a plain room in the Carroll Arms Hotel, a few blocks from the Capitol...
...He stood firm against the efforts of Sen...
...When many Democrats were silent or in opposition, Aiken carried on the struggle in behalf of President'Roosevelt's candidate for the REA...
...Roosevelt," said Aiken, "I think I can conscientiously say that many of the things which he advocated are wise and useful and beneficial to the country...
...The Governor of Vermont now emerged in sharper focus...
...Many issues and policies customarily identified with leftwing Democrats or "sons of the wild jackass" from the Farm Belt now stem, instead, from this mild-mannered Republican who was born 53 years ago in Dum-merston, along the Connecticut River...
...Their nursery and arboretum became famous throughout the state...
...Lawrence Seaway has been only one of many crusades in which George Aiken has carried the flag of liberalism...
...Next he became lieutenant governor...
...This frees Aiken from the goal of the Presidency, an ambition which turns many promising Senators into frustrated men...
...Together, they ordered seeds and cuttings from all over the world...
...This was an honest view with him, not a mere slogan to cover up the exorbitant stranglehold of some private power company...
...The late Sen...
...George Aiken is a refreshing exception to this rule...
...George David Aiken is one of the best friends that the average American has in the United States Senate...
...I like flowers, not their arrangements," says George Aiken...
...He said Lincoln would be ashamed of the modern Republican Party if he could see it in action...
...He lived on a farm near Calvin Coolidge's birthplace...
...George lectured on wildflowers and plants, using colored slides to illustrate his talks...
...As junior United States Senator from Vermont since 1940, he has emerged as one of the nation's most consistent and thorough-going liberals...
...But in general he supported the New Deal...
...AIKEN was born at Dummerston in the Summer of 1892...
...His generaf attitude in the Senate is best exemplified by his own statement that he is opposed to "subsidizing Park Avenue at the expense of the needy...
...It even supported Hoover in 1932...
...Liberals denounced Aiken as a reactionary...
...In 1940 the country got a better look at him...
...He and Bob La Follette of Wisconsin championed the food-stamp plan, which channeled onto the dinner tables of many underprivileged families farm products that otherwise would have gone to waste...
...Aiken has remained aloof from the capital's social whirl, which traps so many politicians...
...The overwhelming majority of Congress is made up of lawyers...
...AIKEN'S career as a Senator has been consistently liberal...
...Vermont is considered as safe for the Republican nominee as Georgia or Alabama is for the Democratic candidate...
...As a Republican whose Republicanism is distinctly unorthodox, George Aiken can scarcely be considered a Presidential possibility...
...It improved national health standards, raised morale, and conserved natural resources...
...Dinner with a few friends, an evening with books and pamphlets, or perhaps a wildflower or wildlife lecture at the National Museum are his amusements...
...Men brought up on rivers often have a kindly and humanitarian view toward the people's interest in the great natural resource of water...
...In 1937 he was elected Governor of Vermont, having ascended the political ladder in the conventional rung-by-rung fashion...
...His constituents, conservative though they may be on some issues, approve overr whelmingly of a public servant who opposes tyranny, whether that tyranny comes from big government or big business...
...He dedicated it to "Peter Rabbit, in the hope that flattery will accomplish what traps and guns have failed to do and that the little rascal will let our plants alone from this time on...
...At the age of 19 Aiken borrowed $100 and with a chum started a small nursery...
...He is a farmer and horticulturist, and he never had enough funds to go to college...
...But the St...
...He does not follow the Republican Party leadership in such matters as confirmations of controversial public officials...
...New Deal Washington was indignant...
...The social life of the capital has small attraction for Sen...
...When he thought that the New Deal was encroaching on personal freetiom, Aiken opposed it...
...Flowers and dairy herds have more appeal for him than lavish buffets and glittering cocktail parties...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 44
